Scent of the Missing: Love and Partnership with a Search-and-Rescue Dog

After the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, Susannah Charleson was so impressed by the newspaper photo of an exhausted handler and his search-and-rescue dog that she decided to train a dog of her own. A dog lover and pilot with search experience herself, Charleson got Puzzle, a strong, bright Golden Retriever, who from the start, exhibited a unique aptitude for search-and-rescue work. But the puppy’s willfulness challenged even Susannah, who had raised dogs for years.

Tinsel Tales: Favorite Holiday Stories from NPR

Ho ho ho! Here's what to listen to while driving to the mall, wrapping gifts, entertaining friends, or relaxing in front of a crackling holiday fire. In Scott Simon's modern version of the Christmas story, Jesus is born in an abandoned factory near Cleveland and the Three Wise Persons bring Chipotle gift cards. Claudia Sanchez gives a Latin accent to "A Visit from St. Nicholas". Barbara Bradley Hagerty explores what Christmas means for the boy choristers of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. (Hint: Handel).

The Big Tiny: A Built-It-Myself Memoir

A graceful, inspired memoir about building a home from scratch and discovering a true sense of self - in just eighty-four square feet - by Dee Williams, a pioneer in sustainable living and the proud owner of a very tiny house. Discovering the sustainability movement and building her own house was just the beginning of building a new life. Williams can now list everything she owns on one sheet of paper, her monthly bills amount to about eight dollars, and it takes her ten minutes to clean the entire house.

The Wild Inside: A Novel of Suspense

For fans of Louise Penny, C. J. Box, and Nevada Barr comes a haunting crime novel set in Glacier National Park, where one man finds himself on a collision course with the dark heart of the wild and the even darker heart of human nature.

Tinsel: A Search for America's Christmas Present

When Stuever's narrative begins, he's standing in line with the people waiting to purchase flat-screen TVs at Best Buy on Black Friday, the opening of the Christmas shopping season. From there he follows a number of key residents of Frisco, Texas, as they navigate through the nativity and all its attendant crises.

The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll Through the Hidden Connections of the English Language

The Etymologicon is a completely unauthorized guide to the strange underpinnings of the English language. It explains: How you get from “gruntled” to “disgruntled”; why you are absolutely right to believe that your meager salary barely covers “money for salt”; how the biggest chain of coffee shops in the world (hint: Seattle) connects to whaling in Nantucket; and what precisely the Rolling Stones have to do with gardening.

Winter Journey

Halina Shore is a Polish born forensic dentist living in Australia. When she travels to Poland to take part in the investigation of a war crime, she finds herself at the center of a bitter struggle in a community that has been divided by a grim legacy. As the investigation proceeds, her professional assignment becomes a confronting personal odyssey as the truth about her own past begins to emerge.

Smart Change: Five Tools to Create New and Sustainable Habits in Yourself and Others

An insightful guide that shows how habits of behavior are formed, and how we can transform bad habits into positive behaviors in ourselves and others. Smart Change explores the psychological mechanisms that form and maintain habits in individuals and groups and offers real, accessible and actionable advice for changing habits. In an engaging narrative, Markman covers a wide range of habits, from individual behaviors like eating better and exercising regularly to work-related behaviors such as learning effectively and influencing customers’ purchases.

Why We Make Things and Why It Matters: The Education of a Craftsman

In this moving account, Peter Korn explores the nature and rewards of creative practice. We follow his search for meaning as an Ivy-educated child of the middle class who finds employment as a novice carpenter on Nantucket, transitions to self-employment as a designer and maker of fine furniture, takes a turn at teaching and administration at Colorado's Anderson Ranch Arts Center, and then founds a school in Maine: the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship, an internationally respected nonprofit institution.

Bad Country

Rodeo Grace Garnet lives alone, save for his old dog, in a remote corner of Arizona known to locals as the Hole. He doesn't get many visitors, but a body found near his home has drawn police attention to his front door. The victim is not one of the many illegal immigrants who risk their lives to cross the border just south of the Hole, but is instead a member of one of the local Indian tribes.

DanBudda says:"Wow!! Please give this book a chance to knock you off your feet!"

Angela's Ashes

Why we think it’s a great listen: There’s no gentle way to put this – Frank McCourt’s performance of Angela’s Ashes is just better than the Pulitzer Prize-winning book. Frank McCourt shares his sometimes heartwarming, sometimes heartbreaking story of growing up poor, Irish, and Catholic in the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir Angela's Ashes.

When the Moon Is Low

Mahmood's passion for his wife, Fereiba, a schoolteacher, is greater than any love she's ever known. But their happy middle-class world - a life of education, work, and comfort - implodes when their country is engulfed in war and the Taliban rises to power. Mahmood, a civil engineer, becomes a target of the new fundamentalist regime and is murdered. Forced to flee Kabul with her three children, Fereiba has one hope to survive: She must find a way to cross Europe and reach her sister's family in England.

The Buddha Walks into a Bar...: A Guide to Life for a New Generation

This isn’t your grandmother’s book on meditation. It’s about integrating that “spiritual practice” thing into a life that includes beer, sex, and a boss who doesn’t understand you. It’s about making a difference in yourself and making a difference in your world - whether you’ve got everything figured out yet or not.

If Walls Could Talk: Haunted Home Renovation, Book 1

Melanie Turner has made quite a name for herself remodeling historic houses in the San Francisco Bay Area. But now her reputation may be on the line. At her newest project, a run-down Pacific Heights mansion, Mel is visited by the ghost of a colleague who recently met a bad end with power tools. Mel hopes that by nailing the killer, she can rid herself of the ghostly presence of the murdered man - and not end up a construction casualty herself....

Unintended Consequences

Nineteen years ago, Indiana police found the body of a young girl, burned beyond recognition and buried in the woods. They arrested George Calhoun for murdering his daughter, and his wife testified against him at the trial. George maintains he didn’t do it. That the body isn’t his little Angelina. But that’s all he’s ever said—no other defense, no other explanation. The jury convicted him. Now his appeals have been exhausted, and his execution is just six weeks away.

The Professionals

Four friends, recent college graduates, caught in a terrible job market, joke about turning to kidnapping to survive. And then, suddenly, it's no joke. For two years, the strategy they devise - quick, efficient, low risk - works like a charm. Until they kidnap the wrong man. Now two groups they've very much wanted to avoid are after them - the law, in the form of veteran state investigator Kirk Stevens and hotshot young FBI agent Carla Windermere, and an organized-crime outfit looking for payback.

Happy This Year!: The Secret to Getting Happy Once and for All

A practical, yet inspirational work that proposes it’s the inner world of our psyches that determines happiness, not outside forces. We have control over our own happiness and this powerful book offers concrete advice on how to tap into it and nourish it all year round. The author focuses explicitly on the positive ways we can establish a higher set-point in our thoughts, speech, and actions, resulting in greater sustainable levels of happiness. Regardless of what the year and your life may bring, we can become measurably and sustainably happier.

Pastel Orphans

In 1930s Berlin, young Henrik, the son of a Jewish father and Aryan mother, watches the world around him crumbling: people are rioting in the streets, a strange yellow star begins appearing in shop windows, and friends are forced to move - or they simply disappear.

The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning

How much can we know about the world? In this audiobook physicist Marcelo Gleiser traces our search for answers to the most fundamental questions of existence, the origin of the universe, the nature of reality, and the limits of knowledge. In so doing he reaches a provocative conclusion: Science, like religion, is fundamentally limited as a tool for understanding the world. As science and its philosophical interpretations advance, we face the unsettling recognition of how much we don't know.

Fed, White, and Blue: Finding America with My Fork

Simon Majumdar is probably not your typical idea of an immigrant. As he says, "I'm well rested, not particularly poor, and the only time I ever encounter 'huddled masses' is in line at Costco." But immigrate he did, and thanks to a Homeland Security agent who asked if he planned to make it official, the journey chronicled in Fed, White, and Blue was born. In it, Simon sets off on a trek across the United States to find out what it really means to become an American, using what he knows best: food.

Rain Reign

Rose Howard has OCD, Asperger's syndrome, and an obsession with homonyms (even her name is a homonym). She gave her dog Rain a name with two homonyms (Reign, Rein), which, according to Rose's rules of homonyms, is very special. Rain was a lost dog Rose's father brought home. Rose and Rain are practically inseparable. And they are often home alone, as Rose's father spends most evenings at a bar, and doesn't have much patience for his special-needs daughter.

The Five Keys to Mindful Communication: Using Deep Listening and Mindful Speech to Strengthen Relationships, Heal Conflicts, and Accomplish Your Goals

Good communiation is essential to any healthy relationship, whether it's between spouses, family members, friends, or co-workers. In this book Susan Chapman, a marriage and family therapist and a longtime meditation teacher, explains how mindfulness can be brought to bear in the way we speak and listen to each other so that we can strengthen our connections and better accomplish our goals.

Spill Simmer Falter Wither

A debut novel already praised as "unbearably poignant and beautifully told" (Eimear McBride), this captivating story follows - over the course of four seasons - a misfit man who adopts a misfit dog. It is springtime, and two outcasts - a man ignored, even shunned by his village, and the one-eyed dog he takes into his quiet, tightly shuttered life - find each other, by accident or fate, and forge an unlikely connection. As their friendship grows, their small seaside town suddenly takes note of them.

Fog Island Mountains: A Novel

Huddled beneath the volcanoes of the Kirishima mountain range in southern Japan - also called the Fog Island Mountains - the inhabitants of small town Komachi are waiting for the biggest of the summer’s typhoons. South African expatriate Alec Chester has lived in Komachi for nearly 40 years. Alec considers himself an ordinary man, with common troubles and mundane achievements - until his doctor gives him a terminal cancer diagnosis and his wife, Kanae, disappears into the gathering storm.

Publisher's Summary

From the author of the critically acclaimed bestseller, Scent of the Missing, comes a heartwarming and inspiring story that shows how dogs can be rescued and can rescue in return.

For her first book, Susannah Charleson was praised for her unique insight into the kinship between humans and dogs, as revealed through canine search and rescue. In The Possibility Dogs Charleson chronicles her journey into the world of psychiatric-service and therapy dogs trained to serve the human mind, a journey that began as a personal one. After a particularly grisly search led to a struggle with PTSD, Charleson credits healing to her partnership with search dog Puzzle. Inspired by that experience and having met dogs formally trained to assist in such crises, Charleson learns to identify abandoned dogs with service potential, often plucking them from shelters at the last minute, and to train them for work beside hurting partners, to whom these second-chance dogs bring intelligence, comfort, and hope.

From black Lab puppy Merlin, once cast away in a garbage bag, who stabilizes his partner’s panic attacks to Ollie, the blind and deaf terrier who soothes anxious children, to Jake Piper, the starving pit bull mix who goes from abandoned to irreplaceable, The Possibility Dogs illuminates a whole new world of canine potential.

What do you get when you take into your heart and into your home a dog that doesn't stand a chance? Devotion, Loyalty. Love without end.And with service dogs, a chance to live a normal life.So many of us take life for granted, living with occasional compulsions, flare ups of anxiety and fears, every now and then feeling disoriented, but there are those amongst us who are absolutely debilitated by these things. This is old news by now, but this book makes it real, yet again, gives us names, faces, emotions that are touching, and we wind up rooting for people who open their hearts and put their fates in the paws of the service dogs who save them. But really. What I like about this book is that it's such a chicken and the egg deal. Somebody saves the dog? The dog saves somebody else? That somebody continues to care for the dog? The dog continues to care for the person? Where does it begin, where does it end?It doesn't matter, because it's wonderful, and so filled with hard work, faith, and hope that you wind up thinking about it long after your reading/listening time is over.My only advice is to listen to it at x1.25 if you find Charleson's narration to drag. Even then, it's kind of slow going. Still, I enjoyed the emotion in her voice, and the tone, just too many pauses for my taste.Wonderful book, great epilogue. Bravo to animal rescue and trainers!

For all the efforts my friends and I put into pulling dogs and cats from kill shelters, rounding up foster homes, and lobbying for laws mandating humane treatment and spay/neuter, none of that may be as effective at making the case to stop the mass killing of dogs as this book. With a calm and persuasive authorial voice, Susannah Charleson clearly shows with personal examples what a mostly untapped resource is sitting in our pounds and shelters. This book is an entertaining and poignant presentation of some of the ways that dogs can be utilized and trained as human assistants (for both physical and psychological disabilities) and clearly shows that our years of breeding dogs to work for us and with us has resulted in many animals with a proclivity to learn and assist - it's not a breed specific characteristic. I absolutely loved Susannah Charleson writing in both this book and her first book, Scent of the Missing, but I did not think her narration with this second book was as good as the first. For some reason, she has adopted the style of some professional narrators of kind of "tailing off" (no pun intended) her voice at the end of some phrases which can make it a little hard to hear especially with background noise (like in the car). However, I still highly recommend this very engaging audio book to anyone who cares about dogs or is interested in the types of therapies (and they are now MANY) in which dogs can assist (and potentially be trained by their owners).

I only give low performance marks if something about the performance makes it hard for me to enjoy the book. I actually like Charleson's voice, a dramatic whisper, and it is great for dramatic and serious moments. But she talks like that all the time even when describing at length how dogs receive a treat. But the real reason for the low mark is that the whispering made it hard to hear when listening in the car on my GPS.That aside I did like the book, and I am a cat person rather than a dog person, but the stories of the dogs in this book were very moving. Also liked the educational aspects of the rules for service dogs and the different tasks they do and how they are trained. I was hoping we might get some details about how a service dog is used for a child with autism but we didn't, but that is just because I am an autism mom so I would have found that interesting. Mostly, we see a lot of OCD. The book did drag a little at points though. I was pleased we didn't go into detail on any animal cruelty. I liked how Charleson brought us up to date on various characters at the end. Good wrap up.

I want to live in Susannah Charleson's world with her. There is no one better suited to telling her story than the author herself. Excellent and worthy follow up to Scent of the Missing which has become the book I most recommend to others. Brava and Thank you.

This book hit on a subject of great interest to me. Susannah gives great detail of her finding, discovering abilities and training dogs for service to people with a variety of needs. One wonderful part of this book is that many times she rescued a dog to save it and in turn the dog rescued a human. A big emphasis is on psychiatric-service dogs and therapy dogs. For me this book was hard to put down. It's a subject I'm deeply interested in.

I haven't been this moved and affected by a book since perhaps my reading of The Book Thief. At first, I wondered if Susannah Charleson was one of those cray "dog ladies", but very soon, I found I couldn't be more wrong about her. Wow, was I wrong! The more I listened, the more I realized what a very special person this author is. She is someone to be taken very seriously. She is someone to be admired.

This lady has the audacity to give a small, abandoned, very sick puppy a first and last name, Jake Piper! She is not the least bit hesitant to revive a dog with CPR. She knows how to fly a plane and is an actual flight instructor. She is an accomplished author. And most of all, very most of all, she loves and understands dogs to an extent I have not come across before. Listening to her book, you realize she sees dogs in a different way that most of us do, even those of us that purport to be dog lovers, like me. She sees into their souls, understanding their motivations and behaviors, and treats them like the true individuals they are.

Susannah Charleson has trained her dog, Puzzle, in search and rescue. She trains other dogs to be of service to people who have a wide variety of needs. She understands the needs for psychiatric service dogs, something I really wasn't familiar with. Seeing people who look perfectly normal with "service" or companion dogs, I have been less than kind in my thoughts in the past. However, now I understand what is going on and now I have more compassion. Listening to this book has made me a better person, I believe.

The stories the author tells, about several service dogs and the duties they perform, along with the stories of her own brood of pups, frequently brought tears to my eyes. Not so much tears of sadness, but of happiness and good feelings, that two such different creatures could work together so well for mutual benefit. This book is happy, funny, joyful, and yes, sometimes sad. Overall, I just call it wonderful.

I didn't have trouble with the author's narration. I did not find the book slow or find her voice trailing off. I had no complaints, and I feel it was a great narration.

This book was an unexpected treat for me. I just had to have more. I purchased the author's previous book about her experiences with her dog in doing search and rescue. It will be my next listen.

This was an extremely interesting book for me. The book begins by talking about attitudes towards psychiatric service dogs and service dogs for those with "invisible" disabilities. Since I work in the field of civil rights, including those with disabilities, I see this in my work and I absolutely get the difficulties these individuals face on a daily basis.

The author has developed her own foundation called Possibility Dogs, Inc., which I didn't realize until the end of the book. It is mentioned in the afterward and is not the focus of the book. What a great idea; this foundation helps to support those with service dogs in any way they can. The author tells her story in between stories about others who have the need of service dogs and the dogs themselves. I loved each and every story and there was never a time in this book when I was bored or felt my attention wander.

I could particularly relate to the story of Ollie T., an elderly blind dog who was left in a shelter. I have a 17 yr old blind and partially deaf shih-Tzu and this hit such an emotional chord with me. She is doing well in every other way, but I see her struggle with her lack of sight in familiar surroundings. I cannot even imagine having her face life in a shelter or other unfamiliar environment as a blind senior. My heart definitely went out to Ollie and I am so happy that he ended up with Susannah.

I listened to this on audio, and I am normally not a fan of author's reading their own books. There are exceptions, and I am happy to say that this is one of them. I enjoyed the narration, particularly as her empathy towards both the humans and the animals that she discusses came through loud and clear. I also have to say that one of the Goodreads groups that I belong to is reading this book this month, and the author has been participating in our discussions; this further humanizes the reading/listening experience. I definitely plan on reading her first book, Scent of the Missing, and hope to read future books by her!